Workforce Optimization Featured Article

Preventing Fraud Online and in the Contact Center

The amount of information we give away online is bigger than we think it is. You may not realize it, but every time you post on Facebook, tweet on Twitter (News - Alert), sign in for online banking and register for subscriptions, you are not only enabling these companies and those who follow them with access to your information, but you’re making life easy for hackers.

The Belgian Financial Sector Federation produced a video last year to raise awareness about Internet fraudsters. Dave, a “gifted clairvoyant” selects random people from the streets and starts listing information the people admit “not many people know.” What they don’t know is Dave’s skill is actually a team of hackers hidden behind a curtain, analyzing the abundance of information the selected people put online.

Recent data shows that more than 10 percent of all passwords are either “password” or “123456.” NICE Systems (News - Alert), a provider of interactions management solutions, recently explored fraud and the plethora of publicly available “private” information in a blog post.

“Mother’s maiden names, social security numbers, first pets, first-grade teachers – all of this information is out there, waiting for even the simplest of fraudsters to use it for their own malicious purposes. That’s not to mention the more sophisticated ones, with the means and expertise to get their hands on our highly guarded personal secrets,” the blog said.

Many companies have adopted password practices to make passwords more difficult to hack; for example, including at least one capital letter, number and special character. Users should be more cautious in selecting security questions and then being aware of if they advertise those answers in a public manner.

The contact center is another target for fraud. Not only can they turn to the Internet for compromising customer information but they can take advantage of unsuspecting customer service representatives. These agents are trained and incentivized to help and satisfy customers, and fraudsters will use this to their advantage to manipulate agents in order to obtain the last piece of the puzzle needed for the account takeover. Companies need to protect against all customer channels, protecting customer data and securing online interactions.

Fraud exposure results in direct financial losses and brand equity damage, while customers harmed by fraud are more likely to churn. On the other hand, protecting against fraud drives increased operational costs and creates service hurdles for customers.

The solution allows organizations to screen all contact center interactions and identify fraud, protect all customers against known fraudsters from day one, help agents appropriately handle high-risk interactions, prioritize high-risk interactions for investigation before transactions are authorized and monitor and track fraudsters’ behavior to protect against future fraud.